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Fuck the Patriarchy: Towards an intersectional politics of irreverent rageMy impetus for writing this comes from noticing just how many times the word "fuck" comes up in contemporary feminist protests against injustice.In April 2019 Huffpost reports on Julia Louis-Dreyfus' response to whether she will see a female president in her time: "I fucking better" (Jenna Amatulli, 2019).Adding the word fuck ratchets up the urgency, as it also grabs the headline in the context of a less censorious and more diffuse, networked press.Activists in 2015 challenging a "traditional marriage" rally in Sydney were arrested for the chant "When I say same sex, you say marriage.Same sex.Marriage.Same sex.Marriage.When I say bigots, you say fuck off.Bigots.Fuck off.Bigots.Fuck off" (see Elysa Methven, 2016).Now the slogan "Fuck the Patriarchy" has gained considerable currency on T shirts, mugs and other merchandising, but so too has the older black activist slogan "Fuck the police" which seems ever more relevant to the Black Lives Matter movement.Protest at the recent women's marches included signs which read "Feminist as fuck" and "I still can't believe I have to protest this fucking shit" ---and then there's the beautiful trending hashtag "#FuckTrump", to name just a few examples. 'Fuck you'But what's in a word?Fuck is one of the most common and intense of all the swear words in the English language and has demonstrated incredible resilience and spawned numerous uses.i Linguists identify its dual meaning: both its literal use 'to copulate', as well as its figurative uses such as 'to deceive'.The word gains its vernacular power precisely because it is tabooit is both everywhere and yet also to be denied (Christopher M. Fairman, 2007).Its use is policed and often quite literally outlawed ---and yet its use is also exciting and
Helen Wood (Fri,) studied this question.